Turkey, the Taj and Street Fighting

To those of you who've been following my travels, sorry about getting behind with my entries.  As you probably know, this was written a few weeks after I was actually in Agra.

As some of you may know, my girlfriend Daphne, was able to finagle some extra time off from work and was able to fly out to join me for 2.5 weeks.  She flew into Delhi on the night of the 23rd.  As expected, she was a bit shocked by Delhi.  As she was walking through the airport, she said that she thought there was a fire...the smell reminded her of San Diego during the recent wildfires.  Of course, the non-stop honking and trash everywhere on thes streets was impossible not to notice.

The day after she arrived, we travelled to Agra.  We ended up driving mainly because I couldn't get a reserved seat on the trains.  It ended up taking us 5 hours vs 3 hours on an express train.  If you can do it, I'd definitely recommend taking the train instead.  The key thing we didn't know is that if you can't get a reservation, you should just get an unreserved ticket for either sleeper or AC3.  I was under the impression that the only type of reserved tickets were general...which is equivalent to travelling inside of a cattle car.

Although we saw several of the sites, our main reason for going to Agra was to see the Taj.  After listening to a lot of opinions about when to see it, I decided that the morning would be best. So we woke up bright and early and got to the Taj by 6:30.  Even with the 750 Rupee (~$20) entrance charge (extremely expensive by indian standards), it was incredible and definintely worth the price of admission.  We decided to forego the tourguide and just see it on our own.  That was really the best.  It was really interesting to see how the color changed as the sun hit, changing from dark grey to a light yellowish/orange as the sun hits it and finally to a beautiful white as the sun gets higher in the sky.

After seeing the Taj, we stopped off to see Akbar's tomb...I got to prove my geekiness by explaining how all guys think of Admiral Akbar (from Star Wars) when they hear that name...at least I do.  The real highlight of the drive home was seeing our first street brawl.  As usual, traffic at one of the intersections on the highway was at a complete standstill.  A truck ended up bumping a motorcycle.  Apparently that pushed the motorcylcist over the edge.  He got off his bike, climbed up the truck and started beating on the driver.  When the cops came over, he calmly stopped, got on his bike and took off.  The cops didn't think anything of it.

After getting back to Delhi, we headed over to my friend Nate's place where we were going to spend the night before catching our flight down to Kerala.  While there, we had one of those weird moments where you have to pinch yourself and ask if you're really in India.  One of Nate's neigbors invited us all over to their house for a Thanksgiving dinner.  It was a real authentic turkey dinner with mash potatoes, stuffing, turkey, dinner rolls, and pumpkin pie.  It was the last thing I was ever expecting to have in India and it was wonderful.